Book Review: Discipline of Market Leaders
Posted in Book Review on July 1st, 1998 by Paul McArdle – 5 Comments.
I first read this book back in 1998 (back before I had started this company), when I was trying to understand the challenges faced by the organisation I worked for at the time.
Hence, to put this review in context, I have used artistic licence with the post date…
Binary Review
Despite being read so long ago, I still have a clear recollection (at least, I think it is!) of the 3 strategic options outlined in the book:
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “The Discipline of Market Leaders” by Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema |
 Well worth reading for a clear view of the 3 strategic options for your business. |
| Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you… |
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The book reports on a review of companies seen as “market leaders” back at the time the authors performed the study.
As is the case with many of these types of books, if you return to the scene of the crime 10 years later, you might generally find that the companies listed as “leaders” might not all still be around (and certainly not all of them would be market darlings anymore).
In this case, I believe that the core finding of the book still holds true.
The underlying premise:
My recollection is that the authors concluded that the successful companies were the ones who successfully focused, whereas the also-rans were the ones that tried to be, and do, everything.
What did they focus on?
The authors highlight 3 strategic options for companies:
STRATEGIC OPTION 1 = Your company could focus on being a Product Leader – in which case your core advantage would be that you would be first to market with new product ideas. You would be continuously innovating.
STRATEGIC OPTION 2 = Your company could focus on some aspect of Operational Excellence. The most common form of operational excellence might be lowest cost (e.g. the mass-market retailing mega-stores) but this need not be the only point of excellence.
STRATEGIC OPTION 3 = Your company could choose to focus on providing exceptional Customer Intimacy.
On reflection, now (i.e. July 2009) it seems to me that there would be a gradual transition of focus for companies looking to deliver a certain widget to a customer – i.e. the first to do so would be the product leader, then costs of production would drop and the operationally excellent companies would enter, and finally the addition of customer service would be the intended point of differentiation for the last type of company to enter (by which time the Product Leader is already prototyping Widget Mark 4).
Not sure if the book made this point.
Will have to re-read the book, sometime, to see what more I can gain from it in relation to my own experiences over the past 10 years or so…